15.2.1 Opening Address - H.E. Samak
Sundaravej, Bangkok Governor

During the last quarter century, many Asian cities including
Bangkok have experienced tremendous expansion resulting in growing demand for
food, infrastructure, social facilities and improved amenities.

Other consequences of growing populations are congestion and
pollution, undesirable social consequences and poverty-related diseases,
increasing demand for ready-made meals raising issues of food quality and
safety, and competition for agricultural lands for development of urban
infrastructure, housing and industries.

Many more challenges are ahead of us as half of the population
of Asia will be located in its cities by 2020. There are a number of issues we
must address to ensure adequate and healthy food.

1. The policies of local authorities to resolve
food problems should be clearly and objectively defined, programmes should be
framed and areas for training identified.

2. Database and management information systems of local
authorities must be strengthened.

3. Clear lines of authority should be demarcated to ensure
food security.

4. The private sector needs the recognition and supportive
policies of local authorities in supplying adequate and healthy food at a
reasonable price.

Other important areas for discussion include water safety,
environmental issues, improving the quality of street food, recognising and
strengthening the key role of women in improving access to food.

I have raised some key issues regarding feeding growing
populations, particularly the poor, in expanding Asian cities. It is important
that we share experiences among our cities and develop South-South and
North-South cooperation. I trust that this seminar will come up with some viable
policy recommendations, action plans and support programmes for the
future.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO) has always had food security as the cornerstone of its mandate. Over the
past fifty years, the Asia-Pacific region has made tremendous progress in food
security. Many nations that once experienced periodic famine are now virtually
self-sufficient in food production. Community-based nutrition and poverty
alleviation programmes in Thailand and Indonesia are held as models for
eradicating food insecurity and poverty in the developing world.

But, there is no room for complacence. Of the worlds
nearly 800 million chronically undernourished, more than 500 million are Asian.
FAO projects that by 2015 there will be 576 million undernourished in the world
and 52 percent of those will be Asian.

Urbanization has grown at an unprecedented rate during the
last fifty years, the number of people living in cities in developing countries
has increased at least four times. With increasing urbanization, higher
proportions of poor people live in urban areas.

Rapid urbanization poses serious challenges for enhanced and
sustained food production and distribution, especially for transport, necessary
infrastructures and energy costs. Further, there will be increasingly
diversified consumer demand in terms of product quality and food safety
standards. These realities must be internalized in national food and agriculture
policies. The rural-urban continuum and synergism must be strengthened under the
growing cities/growing food scenario.

FAO fully recognises the key role for local governments in
feeding Asian cities. They, you, are in a unique position to affect a situation
of rapid change. We stand ready to offer whatever assistance we can to enable
you to improve the efficiency of the food supply and distribution systems in
your cities, thus freeing Asians from the fear of hunger and poverty.

The goal of this speech is twofold: 1) to discuss promising
areas of decentralized cooperation in relation to the delivery and supply of
food to cities; and 2) to highlight the potential of decentralized cooperation
as well as the problems encountered with this type of cooperation. This speech
builds on lessons drawn from the implementation of the Asia Urbs Programme
initiated by the European Commission with the aim of encouraging the sharing of
urban best practices and contributing to poverty alleviation efforts and
socio-economic development in Asian countries.

The Asia Urbs experience in decentralized urban cooperation
shows clearly that initiatives dealing with the issue of feeding Asian cities
are viewed as key areas for cooperation from both the Asian and European sides.
It shows also that European local governments in association with European
institutions are ready to contribute money and personnel to Asia-based projects.
It demonstrates that European styles of urban management, income-generation
policies and agricultural engineering can prove useful in an Asian context
provided they fully recognise local conditions. It often works to pool the field
experience of NGOs in Asia with the urban management experience of local
governments. In short, the Asia Urbs Programme shows that local initiatives can
solve important challenges in feeding Asian cities.

To conclude, the decentralized cooperation initiatives
promoted by the Asia Urbs Programme can make a valuable contribution to feeding
Asian cities in developing relevant urban management techniques. It is desirable
that such initiatives proceed in parallel with cross-disciplinary research work
conducted jointly by urban development planners, agricultural engineering
specialists and economists at micro and macro levels.

Many mayors, city administrators and town planners now think
of the city more in terms of housing, transportation, infrastructure and social
frameworks than in terms of food marketing systems. Consequently, public
investments are often not properly planned and municipal regulations do not
reflect changes in the food economy such as shopping habits and high
prices.

Municipal authorities must have mid-range (four to six years)
and long-range (ten to fifteen years) strategic forecasts for the city, keeping
in mind spatial, demographic and economic evolution as well as food needs.
Concretely, municipalities should adopt policies and programmes in order to
reduce marketing costs and prices, to stimulate employment in the field of
marketing and promote urban and suburban agriculture.

The general aims of these programmes should be:

1. Reinforcing, at all levels, the focus on
quality and hygiene of food for the poorest consumers.

2. Stimulating and disseminating the results of research,
debates and experiments on urban FSDSs as well as formulating and executing
policies and programmes at regional, inter-regional and national levels to
reinforce the efficiency and dynamism of urban FSDSs.

3. Promotion of collaboration between the various institutions
including technical assistance and academic partnerships.

Challenges include rapid globalization, changes in the
organization of distribution networks, the need for new ways to efficiently link
producers to consumers and the rapid evolution of FSDSs and consumer shopping
habits.

15.5 RESOURCE MATERIALS

The following papers can be freely downloaded from:
www.fao.org/ag/sada.htm. The references not listed in the compendium of
background papers, discussion papers and other seminar documents are listed at
the end of these proceedings as part of the supplementary
bibliography.

Food for the cities. Food supply and distribution policies to
reduce urban food insecurity. A briefing guide for mayors, city executives and
urban planners in developing countries and countries in transition

DT/40-99E

Argenti, O.

Urban food security and food marketing. A challenge to city
and local authorities - Paper copies also available in Urdu, Vietnamese and
Arabic